The public records law requires all local and state agencies to adhere to certain record retention requirements. It is the responsibility of the agency to establish its own internal policies and procedures to ensure that the requirements of an agency’s schedule for records are met. The Bureau of Records Management works with the personnel at each agency responsible for creating records to determine the record retention period that is most compatible with the legal and administrative requirements of the organization.
Many states, cities villages, towns, towns and counties have adopted a schedule for the retention of records for their agencies. The schedules include the legal historic, fiscal, historical and cultural requirements for each type of document that is maintained by the agency. The schedules are usually organized in categories or groups referred to as records series. Each of these records series could have different requirements for storage, transfer or disposal.
In general, a record series’s retention requirement is determined by the nature of the record as well as its purposes. For instance, a record series that includes information on financial transactions, legal actions, or litigation could require a longer retention time than a series that includes information on employee performance.
Sometimes the record is required to be kept for a specified time due to a statute or regulation that requires that the record be kept. The most common issue is that these statutes and regulations do not stipulate how long the record must be retained in https://derwentmills.com/2023/06/07/retention-of-public-records/ terms of days, months, years, or even permanently.